


Sunset Senior Living

by thewritingotter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love Through the Decades, M/M, Mortality, Old Age, Old Man Castiel, Retirement Home, Vampire Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewritingotter/pseuds/thewritingotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean offers an aged Castiel a chance to stay young and beautiful forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset Senior Living

**Author's Note:**

> It is true, I do enjoy this drinking glass. I like the way it holds my tea. I admire the way the sun shines off it, at times creating tiny rainbows. This is my favourite glass, but I do not cling to it, because to me this glass is already broken. I know that my time with it is temporary and precious. So I enjoy this glass while it lasts, but I am fully aware that eventually it will fall from the shelf or be knocked over and shatter. And when that happens I will say ‘of course. –Ajahn Chah

_Sunset Senior Living_.

Castiel isn’t sure if the retirement home is aptly named or this side of unintentionally cruel, but, he thinks as he sits on Balthazar’s now empty bed, it’s oddly poetic. It makes sense, in a way; the end of a day fitting a house for those nearing the end. He heard weird old Gabriel once proclaim that they had a rival of their own, a _Sunrise Senior Living_ , at the other side of the city. Why one would name a retirement home _that_ still escapes him. 

Balthazar liked the name well enough though, and Castiel had caught him and Gabriel conspiring once or twice about a retirement home Olympics. Castiel thinks they were just both excited at the prospect of having young cheerleaders. 

He passes a hand across the empty expanse of the bed. It’s cold—far too cold—for something that had once held someone as warm and bright as Balthazar was. Is. He refuses to think that Balthazar’s of the past, something to be forgotten and buried as soon as his body had gone cold. Balthazar lived; he is remembered. He _is_. 

Someone knocks softly on the open door. Three, not four. “Hello, Meg,” he says.

“Time for bed, old man,” she replies, and even with his back turned to her, he can hear the nervous smile on her lips. He wishes her voice would turn up at the end again, the odd, almost sarcastic lilt at the end of every smoky sentence back. She’s been walking on eggshells around him since Balthazar died, more subdued and polite. He hates it.

“Very well.”

She doesn’t wait for him to slip under his own sheets, turning the lights off as Castiel lingers at the empty bed, the pale white of the moon illuminating what he’s lost. 

Grief, he thinks, is a strange thing. He’s read there’s a pattern to it, some stages people go through like one goes through a chemistry experiment or a logical math problem. Hester, the regal widow at the end of the hall, had said that there’s a truth in all that—that one does not go through grief all at once. There were times, she’d confided at Balthazar’s funeral, when she wailed so loudly she feared she had awakened the whole home, and there were times she stayed awake trying to bribe someone to bring her husband back. That is the great thing about staying in a place filled with old people: most of them take their hearing aids off before they sleep. 

There had been no wailing for Castiel, no anger or listlessness or pleading to an absent god. Just a dull acceptance that Balthazar had never been meant to open his eyes again.

Gabriel had found it disconcerting, tossing Castiel confused and pitying looks when he thought the taller man isn’t looking. He’s worried, Castiel knows, and he’s taken him aside for encouraging speeches and stories about what he went through when Kali passed. It’s hard, he’d said, but there isn’t anything a good chocolate fudge cake couldn’t cheer up. Gabriel, for all his loud words and brazen proclamations, had never been one for heartfelt conversations.

Still, Castiel was heartened when he’d found out that Gabriel has never partaken in the nurse’s bet for when he eventually breaks down into a gibbering mess. 

He wonders if he’s too cold, too detached. Balthazar was— _is_ —one of his great loves. Yet he can’t feel the suffocating and drowning grip of sadness at his passing; maybe the others are right in their concern.

Tomorrow, he thinks, he shall tell Meg to throw Balthazar’s sheets into the dryer. Castiel hates the cold. 

He doesn’t know how much time has passed since Meg knocked. He’s found that time passes faster the older he’s gotten, and while he had once found that doing one thing for an hour tedious, he now loses hours immersed in a beloved piece of literature or admiring the home’s uniform hedges. It is a bit odd, but he thinks that maybe he’s just speeding to where he really should be.

Someone knocks on the door four times. “Hello, Dean,” Castiel says, hand still caressing the empty bed. “You may come in.”

“Cas.” There’s a desperation in his voice instead of the usual sharp smile, miserable and nervous. Castiel chooses to ignore it.

“Balthazar died,” he tells Dean, as if he’s justifying his fascination with the bed, “almost four weeks ago.”

“I know,” Dean says, and at Castiel’s surprised _oh?_ , he continues, “I was here when he… The both of you were on the chaise out on the porch?” Castiel nods. “I smelled it- him. I smelled him and I knew.”

“He didn’t make it to see the sunrise.”

“Yeah.”

The brief lull in their conversation isn’t comfortable, too charged with the weight of words from the past and those still to come. Castiel knows what Dean wants—had long tried to cajole him to—but he’s not sure that even the death of someone he loved—loves—so dearly can sway him into the life of someone else he also selfishly adores. 

“Your senses are sharp,” he says, trying to keep the inevitable conversation at bay, “if you can smell death.”

“It’s not one of the perks, I have to admit.”

“Do I smell like it?” Castiel can’t help asking, turning half-around so the tall silhouette is just at the corner of his eye.

“Cas.” There’s a warning there now, one Castiel refuses to heed.

“I must smell like death for years now,” he says. “Lord knows how much of it I’ve already-“ He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter; I know the answer already.”

Dean hesitates. “You reek of it, but it wasn’t always that way.”

“I suppose that means I’m close?” He feels his heart clench at Dean’s pained huff. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Dean says, voice clipped. Castiel really isn’t; death is an inevitability for him—he’d rather Dean accept it now than turn into a mess once Castiel passes. Dean is strong, he knows, but love has always been his weakness.

“No, I’m not.” 

“Cas-“

“Not yet,” Castiel cuts in sharply. “Not yet.”

Dean sighs heavily, shoulder curling in dejectedly. “You don’t have much time, Cas.”

“I know.” Castiel passes a hand across his eyes, feeling suddenly as old and tired as he supposes he should be. “Just- just let me-“ He looks down at the bed again, surprised to see his hand clenching at the sheets, and he releases them, tugging until they rest smooth. 

Tomorrow, he thinks, he shall tell Meg not to use any of those silly smells when she warms Balthazar’s sheets.

Another sigh. “Okay.” 

Castiel hears the sharp _clacks_ of jostled plastic as Dean shuffles closer and dips into the bed, his thigh pressed against Castiel’s. He takes Castiel’s hand, fingers wrapping around the old man’s, and Castiel marvels for a brief moment at how wrinkled his hands are now compared to Dean’s smooth and beautiful skin, wide palms and long fingers wizened. Dean had adored them as much as Balthazar had; he wonders vainly if Dean is still as enamoured with them as he was almost eighty years ago. 

“You’re not broken up about him,” Dean muses softly, a hint of gloating in his voice. “I thought after he replaced me-“

“He wasn’t-“ _isn’t_ , “-a replacement.” He can see Dean’s sharp jaw clench, but he forges on, “He’s not a substitute or a temporary fix or a means to get over you.” He tightens his hold on Dean’s hand when he thinks he’s starting to pull away. “But that doesn’t make you any less. Both of you aren’t less than the other.”

Dean chuckles darkly. “You’re such a fucking hippie.”

Castiel snorts. “I haven’t been called that in years.”

“Dude, you traded that shitty Beetle for an even shittier soccer mom van. It’s like you don’t even want to be a hippie anymore.”

He laughs. “Being a hippie isn’t good for someone as old as me.” Dean tenses beside him. “I’m sorry.”

“So,” Dean clears his throat, “you’re not crying your heart out. What gives?”

“Nothing ‘gives’,” Castiel says. 

“No, really.”

Castiel rolls his eyes. “Really.” 

Dean frowns. “That’s weird. _I_ would be stupid sad if you died.”

“When,” Castiel corrects. 

“If.”

“Dean-“

“No,” Dean says firmly. Castiel sneers despite himself; Dean is becoming petulant. 

“I’m going to die,” he continues, mindless of the tight grip the other man has on his hand. “I’ve accepted it, I’ve surrendered to its inevitability. Why can’t you?”

“Because you have a choice!” Dean exclaims, tugging at Castiel’s shoulder so he faces him properly. “You’ve always had a choice.” 

Castiel huffs out a small laugh. “And what good would immortality do to an old man?” He traces Dean’s eyebrow, running his knuckles down a perfect cheekbone and resting his fingertips on his sharp jaw. “You’re still so beautiful. And I’m… I’m tired.”

Dean takes his hand again and kisses it delicately. “Don’t say that.”

“But I am.” He tries to smile serenely, but it feels much too flat to be so. “I’m not young anymore, Dean. Immortality, it- it’s something one does not want closer to the end.”

To his credit, Dean doesn’t seem defeated against Castiel’s strongest arsenal, the determined look he’d always worn since he’d saved Castiel from drowning decades ago still on his handsome face. “This is why you should’ve accepted it before- no. I’m so mad at you right now.”

“I know.”

Wordlessly, Dean takes something out of the pocket of his favourite leather jacket and presses it against the palm of Castiel’s hand, curling his fingers around it.

“What’s this?”

“A present.”

“Oh?” Castiel opens his hand, brows furrowing as a green circle greets him. “It’s a poker chip.”

“Yeah. I’ve got-” Dean dips his hand into the jacket again and turns the pocket, and more chips are tossed and spread across the empty bed, “I’ve got more. So much more.”

“And that’s… a good thing?” Castiel says unsurely.

Dean bobs his head. “There’s this rumour that an immortal witch is gambling away human years down in New Orleans. I thought it wasn’t anything—some stupid fairytale Benny liked to tell at the nest—but when I saw- when I _smelled_ death when I last came here, I had to- it _had_ to be real. I wanted the stupid fairytale to be real so bad, I didn’t even tell Benny where I disappeared to. He was so mad!” Dean smiles. “He said he’d almost stormed the home to interrogate you, but, you know.” He gestures vaguely towards the empty bed.

“Ah. I thought I glimpsed him at the funeral, but I wasn’t sure. Didn’t think that surly old bastard would lend me some support.” Castiel doesn’t tell him that he was expecting Dean to, that he’d spent countless nights waiting for his silhouette to darken the doorway.

Dean chuckles. “He’s not surly, he’s just… overprotective. We- my kind, there aren’t much of us left. Or much that we know of left. So we like to keep the people we have close.” He looks at Castiel pointedly, but the old man refuses to meet his eyes this time, turning away to fiddle with the green chip in his hands. 

“Did you see him?” he asks him instead. “The witch?”

“Yeah. It was hard tracking that son of a bitch down, but one weird-ass article about a healthy young guy wrinkling up- no offence.”

“None taken,” Castiel says dryly.

“And I got him. He was in some dump of a bar, gambling away human years and lives as if they were nothing but money. Placed in a couple of bets and-“

“What did _you_ bet?” Castiel asks. “Dean, you’re immortal; he couldn’t have asked you for your years.”

“Dude had a thing for my eyes so,” Dean shrugs, “I bet my eyes. Threw in a couple of fangs too, and I was in.”

Castiel gapes at him. “You- you shouldn’t have!”

“But I did!” Dean exclaims. “Cas, look, I’d bet them every single time if I could just have you. I’d bet anything if I could just have you. How much more do I have to repeat that so it’d get through that stupid, thick skull?”

Castiel flushes. “I’m not-“

“If you’re telling me you’re not worth it, I swear to god…”

And this, Castiel doesn’t understand. He understands blind faith, having entrusted his and his soldiers’ lives to a god that had never shown him any sign of his existence. He understands irrational love and devotion, piety and burning loyalty. How someone can have that for _him_ , a scarred, cold old man, is somehow unfathomable. “Sorry,” he says anyway.

He knows Dean knows he didn’t mean it, but the other man continues anyway, “I almost thought I’d lose them, and I was still terrified. Last game though, all in, and all I had was a pair of threes and a queen. I was _so_ sure I’d lose my eyes, Cas, and I…” He runs his thumb across Castiel’s knuckles. “And I thought I wouldn’t give up, that I’d gamble everything away until I get you your years.” He smiles. “Luckily, dude had an even worse hand: threes and a jack. I won his stupid game and,” he gestures at the chips, “I got you fifty years, Cas. Fifty! You’ll be young again and I can turn you and…” he drifts off when he notices Castiel’s bowed head. “Cas?”

Castiel shakes his head mutely. 

There’s a pause, heavy and dark. Dean has dropped his hands, but Castiel feels the emptiness even keenly now, the short distance seemingly much farther as Dean retreats, eyes guarded and mouth set in a thin line. 

He sighs. 

“Why?” Dean finally asks, voice low.

“Dean-“

“You gotta explain this to me, Cas, because I’ve asked you before and you’ve always told me you got somewhere to fly to, something to hold on to, someone to be with! Am I not- no. Just-“ he runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “Just tell me why, Cas.”

“I’ve told you before-“

“But it’s different now, isn’t it?” Dean cuts in sharply. “I’m sorry about _him_ , but he’s not here anymore! You told me before that he’s the only thing tethering you here. He’s dead, Cas, so don’t you go sayin’ that you _can’t_. That you still _have_ to be here; that something or someone is still keeping you from me.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I just don’t want to be immortal?” Castiel snaps at him.

“Why not? I know sucking human blood isn’t the best thing for you bleeding hearts, but it’s not any worse than rotting six feet under the ground! Benny’s even makin’ us steal blood instead of sinking our fangs into live humans. And we can stay young and strong and beautiful forever, Cas.”

Castiel shakes his head again. “You know I don’t care about those things.”

“What about me?” Dean’s staring at him so imploringly, eyes so sad and miserable, and Castiel wants to hug him, rest Dean’s head over his heart so he can listen to his heartbeat, tell him that of course, Castiel cares about him, that he’s never stopped caring about him even after Balthazar came along and made Castiel care about him too.

Instead, he backs up, standing to lean against the wall and away from Dean. He needs to think, needs to gather his thoughts. He’s too old now; he forgets easily, his tongue trips and falters over so many confused lines of thought. And Dean makes it worse—him with his sweet words and earnest eyes. Castiel doesn’t want what Dean wants to colour his judgement. After years of being told what to do, how to live his life, he covets this freedom.

“Don’t think it’s about that, because it’s not,” Castiel warns him.

Dean clenches his fingers. “I can’t believe you’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”

Castiel sighs tiredly. “It _is_ fairly accurate. It’s not you, it’s me.” Dean snorts. “Dean, I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I want to see them again,” Castiel continues before silence falls on them again. “Anna, Samandriel, the guys from the garrison… Balthazar. Even if I have to die to see them, I still want to.”

Dean scoffs. “What, like they’ll meet you at the Pearly Gates or something? Guide you through the halls of Heaven? I thought you were over that Bible phase, Cas.”

“It’s not- it’s not like that.” 

“It’s a faith thing.”

“No, no, it’s… it’s hope.” Castiel stares longingly at the empty bed, eyes tracing the curve of the pillow where Balthazar had rested before. “Like how religion is a security blanket of a sort—some people need to believe in something to keep themselves sane, to keep from wallowing into all this filth and misery. And I _need_ this; I need to believe that there’s something out there after we die—that it’s not just a dark, empty void. I need to believe that I can see my family again, see everyone that I’ve loved again. And if I become immortal, I wouldn’t be able to…”

He can almost see the moment Dean understands; the determination he’d kept the whole time breaks, and what’s left is someone who looks so much younger and more vulnerable than a creature almost a century older than Castiel. “But you can’t see me anymore when you die,” he says quietly.

Castiel nods, feeling his heart break at that as well. “I’m sorry.” This apology is one that he meant. They quiet, nothing but the rain now lightly spattering against the windows interrupting the silence. Castiel knows his answer is necessary, but he dislikes the finality of it. It’s the end of something, a lifetime of yearning for magic and of inescapable death culminating in an answer that he never thought could ever feel so irrevocable. He can’t think about it anymore or have Dean ask another time. This is it.

Head bowed, Dean says, “I’ve always followed you wherever you disappeared to. Vietnam, New York, San Francisco, fuckin’ Canada…”

Castiel smiles sadly. “You can’t follow me this time.”

Dean scoffs. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Dean-“

“I’ll still follow you!” Dean says. “I won’t stop looking for you until I find you again.”

Castiel frowns. “You’re not thinking of killing yourself, are you?”

“Well, if you believe in all that Heaven crap, you bet your ass us monsters aren’t gonna end up there when we bite the dust.”

“How are you planning to follow me then?”

“I don’t know,” Dean confesses, loud, confident voice now so small and unsure. “I’ll find a way, Cas. You know I always do.”

And for a moment, Castiel remembers the man who had seemed so much bigger than him when he was seven—the huge beautiful man who had swam into an icy lake and dragged him to safety, wrapping him in his arms and swearing to keep him safe. Dean had never let him go after, not even when, in a bout of rebelliousness and hatred towards his distant father, Castiel had voluntarily enlisted in the army, and not even when he came back scarred and broken and hit the ground running, away from his grief at having left Anna’s and Samandriel’s short, young lives at his neglectful father’s care, and from his own feelings for Dean—for someone he thought he shouldn’t have—he had flitted away across America and back, falling for someone else even when he hadn’t stopped falling for Dean. 

He’d always been there, his Dean. He’ll find his way to him.

“I’ll wait for you,” he whispers so softly he thinks Dean hadn’t heard him.

Dean scoots up closer to him, pushing Balthazar’s pillow up against the headboard, and takes Castiel’s hand, beautiful fingers wrapping around Castiel’s withered ones. He tugs him onto the bed and the old man obliges, the pillow a warm presence against his side. “You better,” Dean says.

Castiel laughs quietly as he rests his head against the headboard. He suddenly feels so tired.

“I want to kiss you,” Dean tells him suddenly. 

Castiel smiles. “Imagine that, an old man and a pretty young thing like you in a passionate embrace. How _scandalous_.”

“Shut up, I’m not pretty,” Dean chides, hand sliding up from Castiel’s to his bicep, thumb rubbing reassuring circles over the sleeve of the old man’s shirt. “And I’ve got a hundred years on you, so don’t you whippersnapper give me any lip!”

“Of course.” At Dean’s cocky and expectant smile, he flushes. “You may kiss me.” He closes his eyes as Dean nears and the last things he sees are his gentle green gaze and the charming turn at the corners of his lips.

It’s nothing like he thought their first kiss would be. It isn’t wildly passionate or eagerly sloppy; it isn’t frantic with the spreading heat of arousal or desperate and careless and all-consuming. It’s short, their lips pressing against each other’s in something so soft and sweet. The longing is still there, decades of waiting, of being too cautious and too afraid and too reluctant to let go of something they cherished all wrapped up into this kiss.

There’s a light flush on Dean’s face when they separate and Castiel can’t help following it, running his fingers across the bridge of the other man’s perfect nose. Dean catches them and kisses the back of his hand once more. 

“I love you,” Castiel professes.

Dean’s answering smile is bright. “I know,” he says cockily even as his head dips forward and the flush on his cheeks travels to his neck. 

Castiel laughs. “Come on,” he tugs at Dean, struggling to stand up as he feels a haze start to spread across his head, his vision starting to dim. He can see tendrils of yellow and orange creeping into the dark sky and he suddenly yearns to see more. “I want to watch the sun rise.”


End file.
